Clad in the Giant Whale Saint Armor, Li Xiang traversed the Bloody Swamp in the middle of a downpour. With the Divine Movement Technique active, he was as light as a feather, and the treacherous environment could not impede his composed and dashing advance.

His combat boots crushed rotten leaves as mud squirted from the cracks between gnarled tree roots. Twenty-three mucus-covered anacondas, each about five meters long, were tearing at the corpse of a jaguar. The sound of their scales scraping against each other was like rusty gears, exceptionally grating.

’He’d never been a fan of snakes. Beautiful snake women, of course, were a different story.’

SWISH SWISH SWISH! His upgraded Cold Ice Sword Qi swept out like a storm of frost blades. Twenty-three streams of sharp energy precisely sniped the head of each anaconda.

A system notification echoed in his mind: "Congratulations, Host, for killing a Tier Thirteen Mutated Creature: Poison Fang Anaconda. Reward: 1,300 Achievement Points, three Anaconda Gall Crystals (Tier Six Spiritual Medicine), and one Poisonous Miasma Ring (Tier Eleven Extraordinary Item)."

Anacondas were typically non-venomous, but mutation could give rise to highly venomous varieties.

Li Xiang didn’t check the rewards in his inventory.

Since entering the Amazon Jungle, he had hunted many high-potential mutated creatures and amassed a huge pile of rewards, but almost none were Saint Tier. Anything below Saint Tier was of little use to him now. He no longer felt the same impatient urge to immediately inspect and test the power of every new item he obtained.

"Help... me!" A faint cry for help carried from the distance—hoarse, aged, and frantic.

Li Xiang hadn’t consumed a Creation Lotus, so he couldn’t understand the local native language, but he could roughly guess the meaning from the tone of voice.

He flickered out of sight and reappeared several hundred meters away. There, he saw an old man covered in indigo tattoos scaling a rock wall.

Three humanoid creatures pursued him, their joints bending at bizarre angles. Their skin was a deathly gray-blue, like livor mortis, and translucent tentacles writhed out of their eye sockets.

’What the hell? Did the Apocalypse arrive early? Are these zombies? No, they look like the puppets from the Apocalypse, controlled by alien parasites!’ The realization struck Li Xiang.

He unleashed three blasts of Cold Ice Sword Qi, severing the puppets’ spines. As their heads tumbled to the ground, they splattered fluorescent green blood that instantly corroded bowl-sized pits in the earth.

This was one of the reasons Li Xiang had upgraded the Cold Ice Sword Qi rune. It was one of the few ranged-attack Superpowers he possessed.

Moreover, it was incomparably sharp and precise.

While his Earth Superpower abilities—like the Earth Spike Technique, Rock Spear Technique, and Titan’s Grip—were also capable of ranged attacks, they were far too clumsy and brutish. They lacked the fluid, graceful deadliness of his Cold Ice Sword Qi.

The only downside was that it was a sharp energy with the Ice Cold Attribute. His own body possessed a trace of the Ice Attribute, but not much. Curiously, the rune had become much more active recently while he was helping the Twin Gouyu balance its Yin-Yang Energy. It felt like a novel development, and Li Xiang vaguely sensed he was on the verge of grasping something important, though the full realization eluded him for the moment.

The shaman sat slumped in a rock crevice, his hand trembling as he raised an ancient wooden tablet inlaid with a cat’s eye stone. Its totem markings shimmered with a faint light in the rain.

’A Tier One Extraordinary Item, of all things,’ Li Xiang mused in surprise. The Old Shaman had no Spiritual Power, yet his mental strength was far beyond that of an ordinary person. He clearly possessed some form of ancient heritage.

Li Xiang lifted the Old Shaman and carried him to shelter from the rain beneath an overhanging cliff. Then, he took out a Creation Lotus and swallowed it.

In an instant, Li Xiang became fluent in the man’s language and began a conversation with the shaman of the native tribe.

"Thank you for saving my life, mysterious warrior," the native shaman said gratefully.

"They devoured the eyes of the Sun God." The shaman used tree sap to draw a twisted Star Map on the ground. "Every full moon, vibrations from the Earth Vein echo from the Demon’s Nest."

He lifted his animal-hide robe, revealing a festering wound on his waist with half an Anaconda Fang embedded within. "The Eagle Eye Totem can keep my mind clear for three days, but my tribesmen..."

Li Xiang frowned. He summoned a sharp dagger condensed from his Crystal Vein Armor and used it to dig the blackened fang out of the shaman’s wound. After scraping away some of the surrounding necrotic flesh, he took out an Anaconda Gall Crystal, broke off a small piece, crushed it into powder, and applied it to the injury.

The Old Shaman was incredibly tough. He just grit his teeth and didn’t let out a single cry, proving himself to be a true hard man. A sense of admiration rose in Li Xiang’s heart.

The instant the shimmering green Spirit Medicine Powder touched the blood and pus, white smoke carrying the scent of sandalwood billowed up. "You’ll recover quickly," Li Xiang said. "This might even be a blessing in disguise. Now, can you tell me in detail about this Demon’s Nest?"

The shaman’s eyes widened in disbelief. He could feel his body recovering at an incredible rate. Not only was the "deadly poison" being purged, but he also felt vigorous and full of life, even stronger than he had been before.

In truth, the Spirit Dew Rain also possessed miraculous healing and detoxifying properties, but Li Xiang was reluctant to use it on the old man.

This was because the Spirit Dew Rain was the fragrant, alluring fluid secreted by Zhao Xueqing, which gave it a very special meaning to him.

Furthermore, the shaman had managed to escape alive from the pursuit of alien-controlled puppets, which meant he was quite resourceful. Li Xiang felt their meeting was fated, so he didn’t mind granting the man a fortunate opportunity.

The Anaconda Gall Crystal was a Tier Six Spiritual Medicine; not only could it purge poisons, but it could also help a person cross the threshold into cultivation. Li Xiang tossed the large remaining piece of the crystal to the shaman, telling him to consume it in batches by letting it dissolve in his mouth.

If he took it all at once, the Spiritual Power would be too concentrated for the shaman’s body to handle.

"By the way, how old are you?" Li Xiang asked. He estimated that even if the man wasn’t seventy or eighty, he had to be at least in his fifties or sixties.

"I’m thirty-six years old," the Old Shaman said. "I am the eldest in my tribe."

Li Xiang: "..."

After a dozen or so minutes, Li Xiang had learned the details about the Demon’s Nest. His frown deepened, and he decided to go investigate it himself.

"Warrior, may I follow you for the time being? I have nowhere else to go. My people are all dead." As he said this, the shaman’s expression turned sorrowful.

"Wait here for me. I’m going to scout things out," Li Xiang said after a moment’s thought. With a wave of his hand, he used the cliffside to erect a solid stone house.

This was a clever application of his Earth Superpower, which made building houses incredibly convenient. The stone house wasn’t large. Half of it was embedded within the cliff face, while the other half was exposed. The part inside the mountain was naturally secure, and the exterior portion had extremely thick walls, further reinforced with the Rock Armor Technique. He even created a small window and a heavy, sliding stone door.

"Hide inside. You’ll be safe in there," Li Xiang said, gesturing to the stone house. He then tossed down a bottle of water, a few packs of crackers, and some chocolate before his figure flickered and vanished from sight.

The shaman was completely stunned. He remained frozen for a full five minutes before snapping out of it. Overwhelmed with excitement, he immediately prostrated himself on the ground and began to kowtow repeatedly in worship.

"He must be an emissary sent by the Sun God to save us! The great emissary created a miracle with a wave of his hand. It’s magnificent!"

"Or maybe... he’s not an emissary, but the Sun God’s incarnation?"

The Old Shaman was overcome with emotion. ’If this great lord had only arrived one day sooner,’ he thought, ’my tribe would have been spared, and my adorable little granddaughter would still be alive.’

Heading in the direction the Old Shaman had indicated, Li Xiang traveled at a hypersonic speed of Mach 11 and effortlessly located the Demon’s Nest.

It was, after all, incredibly obvious.

The river water here was polluted, black and foul. A stench of decay filled the air, and numerous "Zombie People" and "Zombie Animals" patrolled the area.

Wielding his 7,200-kilogram White Jade Golden Hook Eight Desolations Giant Python Rod, Li Xiang swept through a huge swathe of them, but they were endless.

The most critical point was that these were merely puppets. If he couldn’t find the true body controlling them, the threat could never be eliminated.

Li Xiang picked off some of the larger puppets, such as jaguars and anacondas, but he received no system notifications, which confirmed they were nothing more than puppets.

The Demon’s Nest covered a radius of two to three hundred kilometers. Li Xiang activated Extreme Speed, zipping back and forth several times, and even used his Earth Vein Perception Ability, but he found nothing.

He had heard about this type of creature before. It was no weaker than the Space Exotic Beast from the "Meteor Incident," and it was even better at concealment and lying dormant. It could also transfer its true body at will. He estimated that only Luo Feifei’s Insight Superpower and Divination Technique would be able to counter it.

’Time to summon the number one beauty in the universe. I just wonder if she’s free?’

Besides, Li Xiang thought, since he was calling for backup, he might as well bring the others along for some training. It would take forever for just two people to search such a massive area.

Li Xiang decided against acting rashly and alerting the enemy. If he scared the Exotic Beast off and it fled to some unknown location, finding it again would be incredibly difficult.

In reality, what Li Xiang didn’t know was that a shadowy figure was already watching him from the darkness.

’This ignorant, backwater planet, Earth, actually has a creature this powerful? No matter. After I’ve grown for a few more years, he’ll be no match for me.’

The shadowy figure was extremely cautious. It wrapped and compressed itself, and after a moment’s thought, it stealthily transferred from the body of the giant anaconda into a troop of monkeys, taking the Monkey King as its new host.

The Monkey King was in the middle of mating with a female monkey when its body suddenly shuddered violently. A moment later, the female monkey was also "infected."